Sailing: The art of getting wet and becoming ill while slowly going nowhere at great expense.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Runnin' Wires

There never seems to be enough of everything when doing a job like wiring as it takes so many little components.  the wire, ends, crimps, blocks, buss bars, fixtures, mounts, zip ties, etc.  And everything is it's own specific size.  So I have three wire sizes on the boat so multiply the above list by 3.  Takes a lot of stuff.  I ran out of the positive battery cable.  I ordered 50 feet and probably need about 8 feet more for the addition of the ACR routing and fuses that I added.  I have too much neg/ground battery cable.  It looks like I will be OK on the other sizes with ample left over.  I had ordered 250 feet each of the #14 and 50 feet each of the #10.  The rest of the bits I will have to keep ordering as I go. I can't figure out exactly what I will need till I have the final layouts and wires run.  I do have way too much heat shrink with adhesive  Primarily because I changed the way I was going to do everything.


 I had planned on crimped and soldered joints.  The prevailing wisdom amongst those in the know is that with the new ring fasteners that already come with the adhesive shrink wrap are sufficient without solder and the solder can even be detrimental as it can wick up the wire creating a hard spot that can not be supported and thus fatiguing the wire.  In addition I decided not to solder the battery cable joints either as there is no way to solder and keep the plastic wire shield from melting.  It is better to have the shield shoulder right up to the lug for added support.  Then add the adhesive shrink wrap.  I added the clear plastic shrink wrap to go over all the labels so I can find the wires that I run at the time of termination.  I was able to borrow a battery cable crimper and a ring crimper so it makes life a lot easier (and cheaper).

I ran everything from the main panel forward which really only consisted of lights and fans.  It takes time to figure out the best paths which will be the least viable.  The head has the most visible wires in it as it is the only way to get vertical to the Terminal Block that will be the disconnect point for the mast lights.  I will refine and wrap as I keep going.  The forward navigation lights are now pre-wired and will be connected when installed.  A reading light and fan in the for-peak and two lights in the main cabin. 

I have all of the main battery cable runs made and will finalize the connections as I go this week.  The main positive and neg/ground to the engine is done and connected.  I replaced it as it was found.  The Yanmar must have a combined starter and alternator wiring harness as there was only a couple pf small wires from the alternator going back into the harness.  There was no direct line going back to the battery as I would have expected.  This messed with me for a while and I looked at the wiring diagrams for a good hour before I was able to draw this conclusion.




 I will continue on terminating the and wiring the back half of the boat which will be the stern nav lights and ACR wiring and fusing and the Main Neg/ground buss bar..  The wiring for the electronics such as VHF, Chart plotter and Depth/speed log will all go to a positive buss and the negs will go to the neg buss.  If that gets wrapped up next weekend then I can get back to finishing the teak.

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